


Bitten

by moonbehindmountain



Category: Compilation of Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy
Genre: Cid Highwind - Freeform, Cid Highwind Swears A Lot, Healing, Injury, Kissing, Lucid Dreaming, M/M, Poisoning, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Slow Build, Slow Burn, Vincent Valentine - Freeform, poison sucking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-21
Updated: 2021-02-21
Packaged: 2021-03-18 03:08:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,630
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29602950
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/moonbehindmountain/pseuds/moonbehindmountain
Summary: Vincent Valentine must try to save Cid Highwind after he’s been bit by a poisonous monster. Vincent wonders why it is that losing Cid seems so hard?
Relationships: Cid Highwind & Vincent Valentine, Cid Highwind/Vincent Valentine
Kudos: 15





	Bitten

**Author's Note:**

  * For [vampiredroid](https://archiveofourown.org/users/vampiredroid/gifts).



“On yer right!” 

Cid’s viper halberd rushed past Vincent’s ear with a gust of wind. Vincent couldn’t believe he’d been so careless as to wake this beast. To fail at stealth was so unlike him.

The Arrowtongue was a vicious monster, one well known for not disturbing unless it was first disturbed. But, Cid had been insistent on first checking the cavern for useful materia.  _ We’re here already, no harm in lookin’. _ He’d been right, of course. The unmined materia was there...but so was... _ it _ . 

What Vincent hadn’t known, what had changed since his last field work, was that Arrowtongue had learned to entice its prey with the glitter of a fraudulent materia, gems and stones encrusted on its broad back, and then attack with the intent to kill once they got close enough. 

The Lifestream supported evolution accelerated by the consequence of human greed. He was hoping they were still as easy to kill as they’d been in his younger years. But that was so long ago...

Cid roared, sprinting as he lunged for the spear. The metal handle was shaking in place with a humming metal sound as it’d missed the beast and lodged itself in the hard dirt. 

The beast screeched out a ferocious snarl that had Vincent’s ears ringing as he rushed to cover them with his hands. Its long, venomous tongue slashed about - left, right, left. Its beads for eyes watching every move of Cid’s attempt to retrieve his weapon.

Vincent noticed. He tugged Cerberus from its holster and cocked the trigger. Taking aim with a steady arm, he shot once,  _ boom, _ then again,  _ boom _ ! The gigantic monster reached up with its shining, black claws to attempt to staunch the pain of losing its eye as green blood oozed from the orifice. The injury seemed to only anger it more. It slashed about haphazardly, getting dangerously close as it charged. 

“Cid!” Vincent exclaimed as the creature’s tail thwacked him forcefully in the back, knocking the wind from his lungs. Cerberus clattered to the hard, obsidian floor. 

He watched helplessly as the creature then whipped Cid in the forearm with its lightning-quick tongue, hissing as it did so. Cid cried out, recoiling his arm, and then growled with what sounded like frustration, grabbing onto viper halberd for stability. He mustered the strength to tug it from the ground. 

“Alright ya son of a bitch, I was gonna play nicely, but you asked fer it!” 

Whipping around, he took aim and threw it with the full force of his bicep muscles. “Grrah!”

The spear found its mark, right between the creature’s eyes, lodging in its skull. It danced around in a death throw, screaming for its life. Vincent dodged its giganting feet by rolling away, quick as wind, before the monster then crashed to the ground with an earth-shaking thunder. Its once deadly tongue, sharp as a dart, lay cast out before its gaping mouth, now impotent. Vincent found his bearings, pushing himself up against his knees, looking on as the creature evaporated into the Lifestream. The way creatures seemed to melt away in a flurry of glowing, green sparks was always fascinatingly beautiful to him, every single time. 

“Shit, that did it,” Cid said, wincing. “Kinda feel sorry for the little fella in...in..a..way…Ifrit’s asshole, is it just me or is it hot as hell in here?” He was swaying unsteadily, his face grey and pale. He shook his head in an attempt to gain his bearings. Vincent saw him beginning to lose consciousness and rushed over, catching him in a stumble of cape and armor. Vincent knew this was the venom’s doing. He reached for the antidote stashed in Cid’s pack. No...no, where  _ was _ it? Cid’s bag was a mess of crumpled up papers, pencils, sketches of some sort of machinery, wrenches, minor coins of gil. No antidote. There was a potion though. He uncorked it and with a hiss it activated. 

“Open your mouth,” Vincent guided. Cid murmured incoherently, swiping at Vincent with a limp hand as if to keep him away. The noise in his throat sounded almost like that of a protesting child.

“Come now big oaf, this is no time to be embarrassed,” Vincent insisted evenly. He took Cid’s chin, prickly with his blonde facial hair, between pale, slender fingers and parted his lips with his thumb. His skin was feverishly warm beneath his touch. The potion was thick as it dripped onto Cid’s tongue in slimy, green drops. Vincent examined it apprehensively, resealed the vial, shook it with vigor, and then tried it again. Vincent had never seen a potion with this consistency. He wondered where Cid had gotten it. Maybe it’d gone bad? Was that possible? He tried to remember...but no...all he could hope for right here and now was to stave the steady flow of poison. 

Cid coughed involuntarily after swallowing the medication and then groaned at the pain of the blooming poison in his blood. Vincent unstrapped Cid’s belt from his waist and removed it from the belt loops with a swift tug. This kind of primitive medical care wasn’t something he was accustomed to, even being as ancient as he was. But, it had been briefed in his required training as a Turk along with monster identification and specimen retrieval. And, unlike the floating emotions that seemed to haunt him as vague ghosts beyond his subconscious as he slept, he remembered the visceral mako glow of the lab and what he’d learned there as if it were yesterday. He remembered that, unlike common snake bites, the Arrowtongue’s poison could be sucked from its wounds as it followed living flesh, particularly the mucous membranes of the mouth and nose. 

He cinched the belt determinedly around Cid’s bicep, a few inches above the wound the Arrowtongue had inflicted. The leather tightened and the buckled jingled softly as he latched it. The wound was now oozing ominously black and purple bubbles from the puncture points, as if it were oxidizing...eating…dissolving...

Vincent pressed his lips together, his mouth a thin line. This was because he wasn’t sure what the poison would do to his own body...especially in his post-Mako mutated form. He figured, if anything, he’d be able to withstand more than Cid could. Even if he suffered near death and the agony of the poison, he would not die. The same could not be said for Cid. Vincent could do at least that much as recompense for Cid’s companionship.

And Cid had been a companion, albeit a crass and undignified one. But that in itself had its charm. Vincent found himself longing for the rough of his voice, the smell of smoke on his clothing, the presence of his rancorous laughter against his own ice cold responses and retorts. Nothing and nobody was like him in that way. To lose that presence…to lose someone close again…

Vincent inhaled, narrowed his brows, and wrapped his wet lips around the wound to begin drawing the venom out. He sucked gently, as he was sure the entry point was painful. He exhaled sharply through his nostrils as the poison touched his tongue. It was bitter, like wild greens, and metallic, like old blood, oily and gritty in consistency. Vile. He repressed the reflex to regurgitate whatever his body had deemed as toxic and continued sucking, his eyes closed determinedly, moaning softly at how awful the poison tasted.

He wasn’t sure why, but suddenly his body felt as if it weren’t his own. As if his pale hands at Cid’s tan, muscular arms were suddenly distant and doll-like. As if his lips against the salt of Cid’s skin were replaced with that of a stranger’s. He grappled with the sinking feeling that it could be  _ it.  _

_ Chaos.  _

Lurking deep beneath his skin. Potent and irrational and capable of killing. He paused. He wiped the oil of the venom from the corner of his mouth with a quick flick of fingers. He was going too far. 

Cid’s veins were turning a tinge of black-purple and his skin had grown clammy and cold.

This was beyond his rudimentary healing ability. Cid needed someone skilled in the medicinal arts, and fast. If only he had some sort of device he could call someone remotely from. 

Vincent wasn’t sure why, but suddenly the thought of Veld pressed to the front of his mind. It’d been years, a decade? Decades? Since his old Turk partner had even crossed his mind. But there he was, the weary, pressing smile on his lips. The cigarette between his teeth. The laugh he had, tinged with an emotion that could only be expressed as fortitude despite pain.

_ Sometimes, we lose things, Vince. And the things you lose you don’t want to. Times too short, vengeance we wanna take. But, we keep on living despite that don’t we? Ain’t got a choice in a world like this. _

Vincent felt an uncommon roll of anxiety beneath his chest, though the wave was dull, quelched considering the dire nature of the situation. No. No, Veld was wrong. He wasn’t going to let anyone else die. That was his duty now, as a monster beyond humanity. 

And then, as if for a moment prayers truly were answered, a voice rang out from the distant entrance of the cave, soft and sweet as an angel’s.

—

Cid was dreaming. He had to be. Visions passed before him, formless and fuzzy as ghosts. He was flying in a rocket, higher, higher until he was close enough to touch the moon. The moon was just as beautiful as he’d imagined it: silver rivers of rainbow tinted waters running untouched by human hands, sparkling gold stones that looked like blocks stacked on top of one another, the crystalline stars above expansive, endless, and clear in the dark of the galaxy. He reached out to run his fingers through the soft moon sand. Everything was netherworldly. But nothing more than the vision of Vincent approaching him from afar. 

In this vision he was dressed in red robes, his hair adorned with a golden crown of thorns, his inky, silken hair flowing feminine down his shoulders and back. It was as if he were a distant alien, his lips moving but Cid unable to discern what he was saying. But...he could feel it. The words that Vincent said were tinged with regret. With resolution. With loneliness and pain. Had Cid ever bothered to ask him why Vincent’d joined them? Why he brandished a gun? Cid saw his own outstretched hand, a pale, curling thing, reaching for him. The gesture was one of consolation. It was as if the pain emanating from Vincent’s words had become his own here floating in space. The air was unrestricted, as if any type of whisping vagabond energy could pierce through him like an arrow. The emotion was quick and true, and its poison, that of interrelation and intimacy. 

—

Vincent watched the rise and fall of Cid’s bare chest, moonlight framed by the diamond of the inn’s windowpanes and casting shadow onto the sickbed. The antidote had worked as promised. Vincent wasn’t exactly one for religion but it was hard not to believe that some form of higher power had a hand in their salvation. 

“He’ll rise soon enough. Sleep. I can sense you are weary.”

“Your sense is mistaken,” Vincent remarked. He had no desire to rest. Not until he knew Cid would be alright. The apochethary approached him and to Vincent’s surprise, pressed a stone into his hand. He flinched, recoiling a bit at the touch of the older man’s fingers.  _ Nobody touch me,  _ something growled and prickled beneath his skin. He inhaled shakily to steady it. 

“Materia?” Vincent said, mainly as a distraction from the rise of rage welling in his chest. He examined the smooth, round stone, black onyx with spidering white lines, flecked with silver, eyes dull despite his curiosity. The apothecary assured him that, “In a way. A curaga of the heart.” 

The phrase sounded cliche and dramatically timed, like something from an upper district film. 

“Not to disappoint you sir but I no longer have a heart to mend. Best if you fixate your healing abilities on the living.”

“Ah lad, even the dead remember their hurts,” he pushed away Vincent’s attempt to return the stone to him. “Mako too. The earth remembers and can’t move on until she’s been remedied. Like him there for instance,” the apothecary mentioned to Cid. “With rest, respect, and care your friend will be alright. And so will you. Just keep that stone as a memory. That in time you’ll never replace what’s been broken, but that between the cracks are precious metals.”

Vincent let the words absorb for a moment. He’d heard it from AVALANCHE too. That the earth wouldn’t forget how it’d been wronged. Vincent wondered if it was true or just wishful thinking. 

“How do you know that? What’s your source?” Vincent insisted, his voice still even and cool. 

“Well, I had someone close to me once. A brother who lost his sense for science and healing to the whims and desires that come from a heart that’s hurt. I’m not keen on sharing it, but consider this warning: when you break too many times the heart hardens, never again to be repaired, only weaponized. There’s still malleability in you, I can feel it, though you’re close. Why not let it in?”

Vincent was struck by the strange man’s words. His overly personal story and strikingly pertinent message. No more remarks were made other than clinical ones pertaining to Cid’s status. Vincent tucked the stone in his pocket and closed his eyes to sleep. 

—

Cid had survived. And within a few weeks time he was back to tinkering with a part of Highwind’s propeller. He wiped grease from his forehead, dressed in his coveralls, unlit cigarette hanging from his lips, as usual.

“Hand me that one there Vince,” he said through a drag after striking a match and lighting the end with cupped fingers. The match smoldered for a few seconds at Vincent’s feet before extinguishing. He continued to wrench something off that seemed to be stuck, swearing softly. 

It was as if his near death experience hadn’t even happened. But Vincent couldn’t help but ask, shuffling through the toolbox for whatever Cid was pointing ambiguously towards. They hadn’t even talked about it. What was there to say?

“H-Have you been feeling alright?” Vincent handed him a wrench of some sort. “Since all that happened, I mean.”

“Right as rain,” Cid assured him, taking it and adjusting the width with a flick of his thumb. “Though woulda been a  _ goner _ without that  _ geezer _ , that’s fer sure.” His words came out with force at his exertion, working the machinery. “This  _ fucker- _ gah!” A bolt popped free and fell softly to the sandy ground. “There we go…”

Vincent remembered the apothecary mentioning something about hallucinations because of Arrowtongue poisoning. Some people even sought it out for that reason. That it could strip you down to your essence and show you what you truly wanted.

“Did you see anything?”

“See?”

“While you were…”

“Oh, like a dream?”

“Yes, the old man, he mentioned it might be an adverse side effect.”

“Well, er,” Cid hopped down from the airship’s wing, landing hard on his feet. “Now that you mention it, I did see something Vince.”

He hesitated. Took a drag of his cigarette. This was going to sound terribly strange. But, though he’d be hesitant to admit it, the vision had moved him in a way that he couldn’t stop thinking about it. He had to tell him. 

“You were there...Vince.” His eyes sought to focus on anything but Vincent’s expression. Another drag. 

“Me?” Vincent snapped the toolbox shut. 

“Well, yeah. Ya were in these..robes? Like a hospital gown or something. It’s hard to describe but I knew something was wrong with ya, Vince. I dunno.”

Drag.

“I-I uh don’t know if it means anything but it sure felt real. It made me worry about ya. Like there’s somethin’ yer not telling me.”

Vincent was silent, then latched the toolbox with a click. 

“I-I do worry about you, Vince.”

Vincent turned away.

“Do not bother yourself with it. There’s enough to protect yourself from without another burden to weigh you down.”

Another drag. The cigarette fell to the ground and Cid stamped it out.

“Mph,” Cid scoffed. “Yeah that’s the type of bullshit you’d say to protect yourself isn’t it?”

“Excuse me?” 

“Yeah, yeah, deny it. But I can see right through ya Vince, you’re easier to read than ya try to like to pretend you are.” Vincent looked up at him. He was smiling now. 

“Get up,” Cid said. “I gotta tell you somethin’”

Vincent stood slowly, curious, brushing his black jeans of sand. Cid prodded a finger into his the red t-shirt of his chest. 

“Listen ya bastard, if there’s a heart still in there somewhere, it’s not gonna get hurt again, okay? Not on Cid Highwind’s watch.”

Vincent’s lips parted, not sure what to say. 

“I-I’m fine.”

“Just fuckin’ take it,” Cid picked up the toolbox and pushed it into his arms. “I need ya to stick around so we can fix this shit-bucket up together, you hear me?”

“A-alright,” Vincent relented. “Thought I’m not sure what help I would be in the way of mechanics.”

“Good enough help, I’d say.”

Cid’s eyes locked with Vincent’s for a moment as his hand released the toolbox handle. There was something deep in both of their gazes. Desires and dreams and complicated emotions that weren’t quite ready to be explored yet. Vincent could smell his skin, close to him, the bitter oil, the cigarette smoke, the salt. Cid felt something stir in him at the sight of Vincent’s mouth, red and sweet and soft looking, just like his dream. They both ignored this rise. The silence was interrupted as Cid said with conviction,

“Propeller’s fixed. I’m hungry. Let’s get grub, alright? Alright.”

—

Nothing was between them now as Cid kissed him openly, his mouth firm on Vincent’s. The hallway of the Highwind was dark, the sound of creaking metal and some sort of air hissing through the aircraft’s vents. Weeks had turned into a month, two months, and, unexpectedly and suddenly, this had happened. Kissing, hands on skin in the dark. Night after night after night. It was addictive...for both of them.

Vincent was pressed up against cold metal, his body rippling with subtle arousal as he leaned his neck into Cid’s nipping. His hands hesitantly reached for Cid’s bicep. His heart still felt so guarded. Like a flower not yet ready to bloom. But here he was determined. He couldn’t help but try, Cid’s chest rumbling against him as he hummed in pleasure at their kissing. They had to be quiet, so as to not wake the others aboard. 

“I wanna fuck you,” Cid whispered hot against his ear. “I wanna fuck you so bad.” 

Vincent closed his eyes, exhaling shakily. Cid entwined his fingers in his long, dark hair. Vincent knew he loved it. 

“Cid, I’m sorry...I-I can’t yet,”

“It’s okay,” Cid said softly, kissing him on the cheek, then the neck, breathing against his wet skin. “We got time. All the time in the world. I’ll wait for you.”

Vincent felt relief at his reassurance. He didn’t want to be difficult, but these emotions, these feelings of emptiness from the past refused to stop haunting him. There had to be a way to exorcise them…

“Kiss me hard then.” Vincent insisted, the slightest glint of flirtation in his usual cold, red eyes. 

“Don’t have to tell me twice,” Cid smirked, then wrapped his arm around Vincent’s waist, pressing his body to his. He kissed him, his tongue against his tongue, lips on lips. Vincent could feel the hard of his cock pressed up against this thigh, all things he wished he could want more than he was feeling. His chest still felt slightly hollow, desperate to be filled.

“Hey now, what’s this?” Cid smiled, taking a break from the passion to slip a hand in Vincent’s pocket. At first Vincent thought he meant to mention Vincent’s rare half erection, but instead pulled the smooth, shining stone the apothecary had given him out of his pants pocket. It glistened in the blue moonlight cascading through the Highwind window. 

“What’s with the rock?”

“It means something apparently.”

“And what’s that?”

“T-to let someone in.”

Cid scratched his facial hair, puzzled. “Like a key? You holding out on some treasure? Materia?”

“No...not like that.”

“So it’s a pet then?” Cid teased. 

“N-no it’s to...to remind me that…”

“What?” Cid smirked. It was so cute seeing him uncharacteristically flustered like this. 

“That love is possible.”

“Aw, Vince, that’s real sweet.”

“Don’t mock me.”

“No,” Cid drew him closer, securing him in his embrace. “I mean it. I wanna see the day you believe it for yourself. And I-I uh kind of hope it’s with me you get to see it.”

Vincent nodded slightly, still afraid to admit it to himself. Everything seemed to end without warning. How would this be different?

“Can’t guarantee safety, Vince. But I wanna make sure we make the best of what we’ve got. Here ‘n now alright?”

Vincent said nothing, but his eyes looked into Cid’s, suddenly soft and vulnerable. Cid knew. Slowly he was opening. And it was also Vincent who kissed  _ him _ this time, lips tinged with a bittersweet flavor of what tasted eerily familiar to Arrowtongue poison, strong and honeyed enough to induce the hazy fog of a sleepless dream. 

  
  



End file.
